Great Lakes Ice Cover

Click the images to enlarge. On the left, Environment Canada reports ice cover on the Great Lakes is at approximately 75% ice covered. This is more than double the average ice cover and we still have about a month to go until we reach the average date of peak ice on the lakes. The middle image shows ice cover at this point in winter is the greatest since 1996 and the third highest since 1980 (and may go to #1 by the end of the next week!) The picture on the right is the GLERL camera at Alpena looking out over Lake Huron. This is the latest from the U.S. National Ice Center: “Northern Lake Michigan: Open water except for consolidated thick lake ice in the northeast section of the lake, north of Beaver Island. Elsewhere in the northeastern section of the lake and along the eastern shore 9 tenths of thin lake ice including 4 tenths of medium lake ice. 4 tenths of new lake ice along the western shore. Green Bay: Consolidated thick lake ice. Southern Lake Michigan: Open water except for 9 tenths of thin lake ice within 20-30 miles of the shore from the Milwaukee to Gary. 9 tenths of medium lake ice including 4 tenths of thick lake ice along the shore from Gary to Frankfurt. Here’s the report from Environment Canada on the other Great Lakes.

Yup, global warming causes extreme cold…just like heavy rain causes droughts (lol). Of course, if you ignore physics, you can blame any weather on just about anything! You can’t attribute a brief period of weather (and that includes a season) on “climate change”. We had both the 2-week warm spells in March and July 2012 and the cold weather this winter in a relatively small part of the globe. During both of these events, global temperatures have been at or slightly warmer than average. Global temperatures have been flat – steady since 2002: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif

Nice try, Jacob. Analysis of warming requires using the entire dataset. If we’re in a cyclical pattern, we should be seeing some global averages that match those of the “cool” years on the graph. Jacob, it is clear you do not understand science.

Yeah my Computer Science degree doesn’t really apply here. I don’t think analytical, I don’t develop algorithms, I don’t develop datasets and databases, I don’t do reporting, averages, groupings, and other data analysis, none of that applies I guess. So when I bring up a valid point on why NASA uses one dataset for their average comparison while NOAA uses another set. You have to wonder why use the coolest 30 year period in the last 100 years.

Intresting that Brad isn’t using more than the tired and worn out talking points? This reminds me of Obama’s comments when asked about the affordable health care act, thsts why we putting more funding into the global warming and energy initiatives. Its called deflect and don’t answer the question!

I’ve posted this link before but just in case anyone missed it:
From Time Magazine: Article date June 24th, 1974: “Global cooling causes circumpolar vortex”; Article date January 6th, 2014: “Global Warming causes polar vortex”
Heres the link: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/01/07/time-magazine-swings-both-ways/
You call in global warming or global cooling and you get it wrong. So, progressive “scientists” call it climate change. Whats up with that? Sure the earths climate has changed a lot over thousands of years. And if you mention human CO2 emissions as the cause I can point you to data that shows the CO2 emissions of volcanos far exceed anything that we could do

“The biggest mystery in climate science today may have begun, unbeknownst to anybody at the time, with a subtle weakening of the tropical trade winds blowing across the Pacific Ocean in late 1997. These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America, resulting in a spectacular example of a phenomenon known as El Niño. Average global temperatures hit a record high in 1998 — and then the warming stalled.

For several years, scientists wrote off the stall as noise in the climate system: the natural variations in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere that drive warm or cool spells around the globe. But the pause has persisted, sparking a…crisis of confidence in the field. Although there have been jumps and dips, average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998, in seeming defiance of projections of climate models and the ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.”

Bill, it is your blog so you can do whatever you want. Maybe you love the arguments, maybe the web hits skyrocket every time you have one of these posts, but I am begging you to keep the politics off what is a really awesome WEATHER blog site. Yes the Global warming argument is about weather in some respects, but its not enjoyable and really makes me not want to visit anymore. I love checking when we are going to get the next summer storm, winter storm, etc. but the constant bickering over politics is too much. Neither side is going to change their mind. None of us have the money, or political push to do anything about it we are just peons in a money game, and we will be long dead before we know who was right or wrong. Its just not enjoyable to read people arguing.

Most of the politics comes from you and the facts and data have sure been destroying your regressive political climate profiteering cause…from Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry:

For the past 16 years, there has been no significant increase in surface temperature. There is a growing discrepancy between observations and climate model projections. Observations since 2011 have fallen below the 90% envelope of climate model projections
The IPCC does not have a convincing or confident explanation for this hiatus in warming.
There is growing evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxideconcentrations
Based on expert judgment in light of this evidence, the IPCC 5th assessment report lowered its surface temperature projection relative to the model projections for the period 2016-2036.

I am going to start ‘naming’ the mountains of snow on my street. It is not often the Midwest sees this many mountains in one place. I thought my pine tree had disappeared then I realized it is covered in snow.

I think that story out of Chicago about thicker Great Lakes ice meaning cooler water in the summer is absolute BS. On a year when there is very little ice, the water temp falls to 33. With ice, the water temp is 32 degrees. It doesn’t get any colder than that unless the lake would freeze solid. The ice can slow the warm up in the spring but once the ice is gone, that one degree temperature difference won’t make any difference at all in the summer time water temps.

Hey Craig. Good to hear from you. Something I’ve always wanted to tell you. For 22 years I installed over the air TV antennas here in Gratiot County. I can’t tell you how many times a farmer would say to me… “Gotta get channel 8 so I can watch Craig James”. They depended on your accurate predictions.

Ice requires 80 calories to change one gram of 32 degree F ice to 33 degree F water. It requires only 1 calorie to change 33 degree water to 34 degree F water. In other words it requires 80x more energy to phase change ice to liquid water than to raise the temp of liquid water.

To put that another way, the same amount of energy it takes to phase change that ice would raise the temperature of an equivalent amount of water 80 degrees F. Respectfully, that one degree water temp you referrer to will make a huge difference to the overall temperature of the great lakes. Phase changes are expensive, so the more ice we have, the longer it’ll take to warm the lake. Respectfully, Craig, you’re dead wrong.

It’s kind of like all that latent heat tied up in the increase in humidity we’re seeing globally. It requires 600 calories/gram to phase change liquid water into gas. A lot of the energy increase we’re seeing due to an increase in CO2 is going to phase change all of that water. Your buddy, Bill Steffen, is often confused by this too.

Well, look who’s back, our local climate-profiteer. I’d love to see you debate Craig James on “global warming”. Craig + Physics against BigDaddy and Al Gore’s talking points. Bottom line – global temperatures have been remarkably steady since 2002: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif Here’s the latest from Dr. Judith Curry, the Head of Climate Science at Georgia Tech, a FELLOW of the American Meteorological Assn. (like Craig James) and a member of the BEST group at Berkeley that you often have quoted:

“For the past 16 years, there has been no significant increase in surface temperature. There is a growing discrepancy between observations and climate model projections. Observations since 2011 have fallen below the 90% envelope of climate model projections
The IPCC does not have a convincing or confident explanation for this hiatus in warming.
There is growing evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.”
Based on expert judgment in light of this evidence, the IPCC 5th assessment report lowered its surface temperature projection relative to the model projections for the period 2016-2036.”

big Daddy (with a little b?)…..Spoken like someone who who never lets the facts get in the way of a good theory. First of all, I did say the ice would slow the warm up in the SPRING. You must have missed that. Secondly, if you look back at the years when there was a lot of ice, we had record high temperatures as early as mid May back in 1977. I think you will find that if this summer has even average air temperatures, the Lake Michigan water temperatures will be right back to average too. It may just take a few days longer to get to that point. Ignoring what has happened in the past seems to lead to all sorts of strange statements.

Craig, good to see you coming out of retirement to help Bill out with the corporate denier stuff. What you said was that the article was “BS”. In addition you made several idiotic statements about temperature change while paying no attention to latent heat.

If you truly want to come on here and declare bull sh!!, you probably ought to understand the science.

Corporate denier stuff….that’s pretty funny. You seem to be living proof that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But as to the subject, I did say the article was “BS”. I also said the ice would affect the warmup in the spring but NOT the water temperatures in the summer, which is what the article said. I do believe I understand latent heat as well as you and I also believe I understand past weather events quite well. Please find examples of where the water temperatures were cooler in the summer due to winter ice and not due to a cool summer. I’ll be waiting.

Craig please ask big little Daddy on what professional credentials he has. What are his qualifications to call your statements idiotic? There is no evidence that he has a PhD, Environment specialist degree or that he is a meterologist! Peoole like thrive on pushing people around on the blog. Sad thing about it is he thinks he is right! The unbelieveable part is that he thinks people listen to him!

Craig, I hate to split hairs but you said, “that one degree temperature difference won’t make any difference at all in the summer time water temps.” You clearly didn’t take specific heat into account when you made the statement.

You know, you should just do what Bill does, cut and paste three or four dated pieces of right-wing propaganda and pretend you never stepped in it to begin with. End it with a clever rhyme or jab at socialism or Obama or Compact Florescent light bulbs, and call it good. You’ll rile the hoople heads up, they’ll call me names, and you’ll look great. It’s not about science on here. It’s about rhetoric.

Well, let’s just pony up another couple of trillion dollars that we don’t have, to “Fight” global warming. We’re spending about $1T on the so called farm bill; so what’s a few more trillion? Sheesh, it just never ends.

Hey, Mike M. Great to see you got out of rehab. Here’s an article from the Institute of Physics that may shed light on your question. It’s from ’12 and offers a scientific rather than political explanation for our current weather pattern.

“For the past 16 years, there has been no significant increase in surface temperature. There is a growing discrepancy between observations and climate model projections. Observations since 2011 have fallen below the 90% envelope of climate model projections
The IPCC does not have a convincing or confident explanation for this hiatus in warming.
There is growing evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxideconcentrations
Based on expert judgment in light of this evidence, the IPCC 5th assessment report lowered its surface temperature projection relative to the model projections for the period 2016-2036.”

She’s a Climate Scientist…here’s more of what she said:

“The growing evidence that climate models are too sensitive to CO2 has implications for the attribution of late 20th century warming and projections of 21st century climate change. Sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide, and the level of uncertainty in its value, is a key input into the economic models that drive cost-benefit analyses, including estimates of the social cost of carbon.

If the recent warming hiatus is caused by natural variability, then this raises the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural climate variability. In a recent journal publication, I provided a rationale for projecting that the hiatus in warming could extend to the 2030’s. By contrast, according to climate model projections, the probability of the hiatus extending beyond 20 years is vanishing small. If the hiatus does extend beyond 20 years, then a very substantial reconsideration will be needed of the 20th century attribution and the 21st century projections of climate change.”

My snowfall is at 92″ for the season now. Closing in on 100″. I hear 131 is closed at the Byron Center exit. Roads were horrible going to school. Byron Center and Coopersville were the only schools that stayed on a two hour delay. Other schools had a delay then closed. There wasn’t many, but the two hour delay in Byron Center did not cut it. I know someone in my class that crashed on the way to school today. 4″ of solid standing snow on the road.

Yeah I was surprised how bad the roads were this morning. I drove to the doctors office at 10:30 and Cascade road was completely snow-covered and slippery. Thankfully road crews were working hard to clear of the snow, so hopefully things are better by now.

Wow the ice cover is increasing like crazy now. Im pretty sure that is why it is completely sunny here right now… usually we get lake effect snow after storm systems. Although the winds are technically N/NE so I wouldn’t be seeing any cloud cover anyways. But still… this sun is very enjoyable and welcome!
*I also see that there are WWA’s near Chicago for LE snow, so I guess there is still enough open water for it to occur.

“We had nearly 5 inches of snow with the latest storm. Our snow depth at Grand Rapids was 22 inches this afternoon, the greatest snow depth since January, 1979. The record at Grand Rapids is 27 inches set in January, 1978 right after the Blizzard of ’78.” –NWS

This winter is all about record setting…keep knock-in em down….this last little deformation snow left me a 2″ bonus I wasn’t expecting…so it looks like a little wsw les action riding the heals of this last event…then poss. 2-5 over the weekend…I like !!

Hey Bill, this is kind of the same concept of what Skot said, but what is the difference between a “Thunderstorm” and a “Thundershower”? or is there no real big difference? I have always wondered that.

Thundershower is an informal word sometimes used to describe a “weak” or perhaps “garden-variety” thunderstorm. As far as I know, it has no formal definition. Any shower that contains lightning/thunder (whether or not it has any precip reaching the ground) is officially considered a thunderstorm, but I think thundershower makes the informal distinction that it may be isolated, short-lived, have little to no threat for hail/wind, etc. The danger is not necessarily less, because lightning is always dangerous.

Ya, if we can pick up a couple inches from les here and there….real in this weekends clipper 2-5″.. and maybe catch some of that southern stream headed towards our south earlier next week….we could pick up another 15+ total by middle of next week, and only have about 25″ left to hit that record…with half of February still to come, not to mention March….it’s possible….

Yes, you never can tell what Mother Nature has in store for us…but how ever this plays out I think she has a few hold cards we haven’t seen, especially given what we have seen thus far…if anything expect the unexpected

I’m happy to lend a hand Barb, if you need some help shoveling….I do work full time, but I would do what ever I can to ease your bourdon. I know for some winter is a challenge, and it does not yield to our wants or needs….anyways let me know..happy to help….

Bill I think about a handful of your bloggers remember Craig James u should post that pic of u to back in the 70′s I think when u both worked at wzzm!!! Best move channel 8 ever did was to bring u over and have u both work side by side for the last time!!! Kind of like having Peyton Manning and Brett farve on the same team!! I had misses Woods as a teacher what a nice lady!!! She would call Craig all the time when we had a storm coming ask him about us not having school!! Wow that was a long time ago!!! Craig I hope u post more on Bills blog have fun on your trips be safe!! INDYY…..

FWIW, this was discussed in Quad City NWS AFD…I do see a break in the cold pattern by 3rd week in Feb or just after Valentines weekend, still think we have 2-4 weeks of late winter pattern after the mini thaw coming up. Confidence is growing active spring as stubborn Siberian cold retreating vs Spring warmth expanding. Now how will snowpack and frozen great lakes come into play that is a tough call. We could still be below normal for awhile this spring.

MAJOR REGIME CHANGE STARTING DAYS 5 INTO DAY 10 NORMALLY SUGGEST
MAJOR CHANGES IN SOLUTIONS AND PREDICTABILITY NEXT SEVERAL DAYS.
THIS CHANGE WILL RESULT IN MUCH WETTER CONDITIONS ALONG WEST COAST
WITH MILDER TEMPERATURES AT/BEYOND DAY 10 FOR CENTRAL US. THE
MAGNITUDE OF ENERGY CHANGES IN THE PACIFIC ARE AMONG THE HIGHEST
I HAVE SEEN OVER A 5 DAY PERIOD USING MULTIPLE SOURCES IN 35 YEARS
OF ANALYSIS. THE MEANING…THIS WILL NOT BE A MINOR CHANGE AND
SHOULD RESULT IN MAJOR TEMP/MOISTURE CHANGES LASTING MANY WEEKS
AND QUITE POSSIBLY MONTHS. TELECONNECTION WEIGHTING SUPPORTS MAY
RESULT IN AN ACTIVE SPRING…MUCH MORE TYPICAL THAN WHAT HAPPENED
LAST YEAR WHICH THIS AUTHOR CORRECTLY ASSESSED WOULD HAPPEN LAST
WINTER. THERE MAY BE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN KEY INDICES USED IN
TELECONNECTION TECHNIQUES NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS DUE TO THIS REGIME
CHANGE. THIS WILL BE QUITE EDUCATIONAL TO MONITOR. THE REGIME WE
ARE ON A TRAJECTORY FOR…FAVORABLY SUPPORTS HIGHS IN THE 50S AND
POSSIBLY 60S AT TIMES BY LATE IN THE MONTH…QUITE A CHANGE FROM
PAST 2 MONTHS. THE WEST COAST AND INTER-MOUNTAIN REGION WILL SEE
IMPRESSIVE RAIN TOTALS FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT FEW WEEKS. THIS MAY
CONTINUE BASED ON ANALOGS AND STATISTICAL WEIGHTING IN
TELECONNECTIONS LOCALLY USED BY THIS AUTHOR…FOR MUCH OF THE
EARLY TO MID SPRING…POSITIVE IMPACTS TO WESTERN DROUGHT…HIGH
PW/S WOULD SUPPORT FLOODING RISKS THOUGH.

The only positive and ‘civil’ post in this entire thread. All I have to say is FINALLY some GOOD news.

Now maybe some of these ‘snow clowns’ will crawl back into their caves until next year. This blog has become a joke and not the least bit interesting to read anymore with the handful of participants and their absurd posts ‘ad nauseam’ every 4 minutes.

It almost sounds like someone has a gun to your head TomKap…so basically this is the first good news you have heard since November, no wonder your always upset…I’m glad you enjoyed the post from The Quad Cities….I’m just happy that you are happy….how many days till spring in Iowa? I call my relatives and give them the good news…:) blog would not be the same without ya…

Really, Okay TomKap….is that your name…if so you are more credible..? Winter storm warning please bothers you…I’m not really into name calling, so I leave that up too you..and yes I know where the quad cities are geographically…I could also go over to Green Bay and see what the weather is like, because it’s just like our weather..the lake plays no role in our weather,correct..? What ever is music to your ears..so how many days till spring? Oh, and Illinois isn’t a city by the way…

Well GFS and to some degree the GEM show this on the latest runs, however HI RES Euro wants to keep the cold hanging around at least next 10 days and a bit longer. At least we are starting to see signs of the cold breaking down a bit. It could take a bit for the models to figure this all out and the timing get pushed up and down. Still a bit worried about any SSW and Greenland blocking to show up with a -NAO that would be another wildcard out there to keeps things colder.